


All That We See or Seem

by blasted_heath



Series: Wings of a Gull [3]
Category: The Terror (TV 2018), The Terror - Dan Simmons
Genre: Anxiety, Fear of Death, Friendship/Love, Gothic imagery, Inspired by Poetry, M/M, Missing Scene, Nightmares, Panic Attacks
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-11
Updated: 2019-01-11
Packaged: 2019-10-08 09:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,921
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17384012
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/blasted_heath/pseuds/blasted_heath
Summary: The stress of the expedition leaves Francis with even more disturbed sleep than usual.-----Take this kiss upon the brow!And, in parting from you now,Thus much let me avow —You are not wrong, who deemThat my days have been a dream;Yet if hope has flown awayIn a night, or in a day,In a vision, or in none,Is it therefore the lessgone?Allthat we see or seemIs but a dream within a dream.—Edgar Allen Poe, "A Dream Within a Dream" (1848)





	All That We See or Seem

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to [@franklins-leg](https://franklins-leg.tumblr.com/) for helping me with edits and creating some of the scenes!
> 
> Warning: this deals with anxiety and panic attacks.

Francis was dreaming, again. Must have fallen asleep on his feet, he thought. He’d done it enough lately to know what it felt like; and it was always the same dream, essentially. He was walking, always walking in the pack ice, feeling all the while like he was searching for something, though he never knew what. It was a cruel irony, he came to realize: his waking hours were spent walking, hauling the boats with the rest of the men, though it was stone and not ice beneath their feet now, and when he slept he _dreamed_ of walking. And it was never at night that he slept, of course—only during the day, while _walking._

In his dreams it was always night, though sometimes it was pitch black, and sometimes he could see by moonlight. Tonight he was making his way by lantern-light, winding his way through a particularly dense labyrinth of pressure ridges and icy swells, trying to recall which features would point him back to the ships. He heard a rustling as a white owl landed on one of the jagged ridges and stared down at him, and he almost laughed. _That was new_. It had been years since any of them had seen an owl in the ice; his mind must be running out of ideas to keep itself occupied. Couldn’t blame his imagination, however. Anything that would break the monotony of ice and _more ice_ would at least be vaguely amusing. 

He turned a corner and was suddenly thrust upon an open plain of ice, curiously flat and undisturbed. He could easily make out the ships in the distance, sitting peacefully in the ice with their canvas roofs strung up over the decks, and all their lanterns lit. Finally, he thought. He began trudging his way through the snow—apparently there was snow now—and wondered vaguely why he was not using snowshoes. The expedition had supplied them, had they not? The owl flew out from behind him and alighted again several yards ahead, its wings digging patterns in the snow as it landed. _Oh, still here are you,_ he grumbled at it. _Suppose you’re mine for the time being._ The bird just blinked its round, yellow eyes and opened its beak in a curious avian grin. _Suit yourself, then._

He wandered on, closing the distance between him and the ships with relative ease. Lanterns hung there, and light shone from within, but the vessels were entirely silent. He glanced up and saw that the owl had taken up residence in _Terror_ ’s rigging and was biting at the lines like it might tear apart some unfortunate rodent. _You bloody imbecile. Trying to induce me to shoot you so I can curse this entire damned expedition? Not a chance, friend. So you can go ahead and get your feathered ass off my ship._ The owl looked at him with an expression that in a man could only be read as utter disdain. 

He thought he ought to go aboard and determine why it was so quiet this evening, but found himself staring at the horizon, where a green light was beginning to form. No sunrise, this time of year. And whatever it was seemed to be emanating from the ground itself, so that ruled out the aurora. He continued walking past the ships, drawn to determine what it was. The sea ice was remarkably level here, so it was difficult to judge distance; he never seemed to be getting any closer, but it _was_ getting brighter, and broader. Perhaps _it_ was getting closer to _him_. He began to hear sounds, muffled and watery, but they sounded like voices. Men shouting. He glanced behind himself to look back at the ships, but there was still nothing there, no movement at all. When he turned around again, the light was definitely brighter, and yellower, and he saw that there were _figures_ within it. Men in contorted positions, dark against the brightening horizon, being consumed by the light around them…

“All right, there, Francis?” A voice beside him jolted him back to something more resembling consciousness. Someone was walking next to him, silhouetted against the brightness of the clear sky. The light of the sun dogs behind him made his figure hard to distinguish, even as Francis blinked through the blue lenses of his snow-goggles. “All right...,” he confirmed. “...James?” he went on, still struggling to see who it was who was talking. 

The man next to him snorted in amusement, but it blended into a groan of exertion at trying to speak while hauling. “Christ, you _were_ sleeping,” he managed, in fragments. “If you forgot who’s been here. Whole time. Looked like you were gone from us. Had to ask.” Though he sounded short of breath, he flashed a crooked grin. How was James managing to stay so cheerful, while he was clearly ill? 

“He’s right,” said another, even more cheerful voice, interrupting Francis’s thoughts before he could consider James’s physical state in more detail. “James and I’ve been placing bets on where you were. In your head that is. Begging your pardon, sir.” 

The man who belonged to the voice stepped into view. Henry Le Vesconte was not hauling at the moment, but did appear to be limping as he walked alongside. No wonder, thought Francis. The man was, after all, missing several toes (a casualty of the last winter), and perhaps had not yet learned to compensate for their loss. “That, and who you were calling an imbecile,” the man continued. “I assured James that you clearly meant _him_ , but he believes—”

Francis shook his head and tried to muster a polite smile. “No matter, lieutenant.”

 

\---

Sleeping in the days of midnight sun, when in a tent, was a generally futile task. Francis had hardly slept well when they were on the ships, and the rocky landscape of King William Land hardly made a more welcoming bedchamber. He found himself staring at the canvas around him, contemplating the hours until the sun would set. Time was an abstract and ultimately useless concept, much as their gold-chained watches still hung about their persons in an absurd nod to convention. Sometime in the dusk, he thought he might have finally drifted into sleep, but when he next opened his eyes the night was still dark. Nights were damnably short these days, so he suspected he must have only been out for a few minutes. No matter. It was not as if sleeping was particularly refreshing for any man among them now.

No point lying awake. Perhaps someone else would be about. _James_ , he thought. No. If that man was still awake he would drag him to bed himself and force him to rest. James was not well (worse than many of them, in fact, as much as he tried personally to deny it), but he was surviving, and he would keep surviving if Francis had to give his own life for it. He wasn’t quite sure what he meant when he said it that way, to himself—how would one’s death prevent another from succumbing to scurvy? Making more rations available, perhaps? Not that the food they had left was particularly of any value in that regard—but he knew that if he figured out what he did mean, he would do it immediately to save his friend. 

It was not even particularly cold outside, anymore. Probably still below the freezing point, he guessed, but with the most basic of their Arctic clothing, the men would not even shiver at that, not after three years. The camp was all quiet, he found; he was the only one awake after all. He thought he he heard something smaller than a man scurrying about in the distance; probably just Neptune, but maybe a fox. Maybe even a hare. He grabbed one of the hunting rifles from a boat just to be sure. It would be a shock to the men to be awoken by gunfire, of course, but welcome, he supposed, if they discovered it meant that there was game. Even if only enough for some of them—for the weakest among them first, of course. _James_ , he thought again, before cursing himself internally and reminding himself that he had better start thinking like a captain again, instead of some idiot fool engaging in favouritism. 

He walked along the frozen coastline, shale crunching under his deteriorating boots. Perhaps he shouldn’t be walking after all, with the state of them—but they did have spares, of course. He did not want to think of _why_ they had spares. The aurora was blue tonight. _Why was there always a damned aurora?_ Even when the night was two hours long the Arctic had to taunt them with its blasted stereotypes, which had long outlived their beauty, and now made Francis think of nothing more than that the sky was decaying, burning, bleeding, or some other damned way of coming apart. At worst it reminded him of ghostly faces and hands, reaching across the sky, groping their way through some horrid portal from a world beyond. Grasping hands…

_Grasping...cold, and In the icy silence of the tomb… So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights ..._

The words sprang unbidden into his mind. Some damned book he had once picked up while still on _Terror_ , he remembered, in a vain attempt to occupy himself after he had given up drink. Who had thought that bringing books of poetry written by unfortunate men who had died young, coughing up blood from consumption, was in _any way_ appropriate? Who had kept that one, even after consumption claimed not one but several of the first lives of the expedition? No one needed literary reminders of mortality. Not here. Good, bleeding Christ. He hoped that book was among the ones they had stowed on the boats for fire kindling, so he could burn the bloody thing himself. 

He walked until the stars had all gone out and the faintest hint of a light was glinting on the horizon. Ought to turn back, probably. How far had he walked? He had perhaps been out for half an hour or so, so a mile and half? Two? They would be lucky if they would be making that much distance in one day with the boats, soon, he thought. They would have to think of leaving things behind, and think of it quickly. He meant to turn around, but was halted in his progress by the sight of something moving in the distance. 

_This living hand, Francis._

__

Oh, hell. 

__

__

_I hold it toward you._

 __

__

He shook himself. Probably deserved this for doing exactly what he would have told any other man not to do, and walking out in the middle of the Arctic night. He might have done better to just stare at the walls of his tent all night long.

The shape moved in the distance again. A bear? It oscillated, like the shoulders of a bear as it ran straight towards a man. But not quite. Darker, and the perspective was wrong. Smaller, and closer, it seemed. He finally jolted himself from the place in which he had seemed strangely cemented, and moved toward it. 

Whatever it was was not animal, he decided. Vegetable, perhaps. The thing was undulating in a breeze that he could not himself feel, and as he moved on he discovered it was not one thing, but many. Long mounds in a line along the coast, with waving tendrils emanating from them. Some form of _tripe de roche_ perhaps, Arctic lichen, the unlikely preserver of Franklin’s first expedition. He doubted it would save them now, even if he was correct about what it was, but it would be worth asking Doctor Goodsir about in the morning. Except that it was morning, and he really should be walking back. Yet again he tried to will himself to turn around, but found that he had lost control over his path of motion. 

The tendrils grew longer as he approached, and finally, _finally_ , he recognized it for what it was. Smoke, rising from a neat line of stones, in the shadow of the sea ice that had been thrust up into mountains along the shore. He barely had time to register that the stones were vaguely human-shaped, before the smouldering mass finally took flame, and erupted into a wall of yellow light, only a few feet before him. Something stung at his eyes, but he did not feel the heat of fire upon his face. The voice spoke in his head again. 

_I hold it toward you. You!_

__

The light was all around him now, and he felt himself still being propelled forward. His feet were moving, he saw when he looked down, but he was certainly not conducting them. He felt like there were shadows moving around him, but they flickered past with a suddenness that rendered them faceless, conjured and snuffed out of existence in an instant by the dancing flames. The stones, which may not have been stones at all, were also faceless, some laying down, some upright, continually crumbling into dust before re-appearing elsewhere, closer. Always closer. Dozens of them, multiplying, pressing in upon him, threatening to overtake him and crush him in their mass of...bodies. Human bodies, without a doubt. Burned corpses, with destroyed features, but hollowed eyes. He wanted to turn and run, but could not move; he wanted to shout, but could not work his voice either. He forced his eyes shut, willing that when he opened them, the whole scene would dissolve. He could feel hands beginning to press in on him, grasping his shoulders, before—

_Francis!_

__

His eyes shot open. He had been covering his eyes with his hands, he realized, and only slowly did he let his fingers drop away from his face. There was no fire, but the sea ice shone with a ghastly glow in the first hints of the sunrise. There was a boat before him. Not one of the boats from the sledge teams, or at least he did not think so; for it was empty. _No. Stay._ Something gnawed in his stomach saying that he should not step forward, vaguely aware that nothing good ever came of looking, but with a dreadful pang, he realized he was still not in control of his movement. There was someone lying there. He knew it before he saw it, and he did not wish to see. _No. No!_ His legs stumbled against wood as he collided with the boat, having tried desperately to look or move in any other direction. His gaze was jolted to look directly at whatever lay inside, and he blinked in the rising contrast of the daylight. The boat, painted a light green and having become coated in thin veneer of ice, was blinding in the glare. The person inside was all dark. Francis had expected a skeleton, or another burned corpse. But this was a man. Just a man, strangely lifelike, yet unmoving, with eyes closed. His hands lay at his sides, pale and perfectly articulated. Around him was a strange assortment of watches, books, navigational instruments, and odd trinkets. The only movement came from the edges of his hair, which wavered slightly in the morning breeze. Francis blinked again to bring the scene into focus. The man was beautiful. Dark hair curled perfectly around his face, dark eyelashes laying against his unmarred skin. His long-limbed, slender form was arrayed in dark blue and gold, with a shining high collar that accentuated the graceful slope of his shoulders. He wore exquisitely polished boots up to the knee. He could not be _dead_ , Francis thought, with a dampening fog pressing around his brain; his eyes and mouth were peacefully closed, not gaping like a corpse. But his skin was pale as the grave…

“James?” he whispered, raising a trembling hand. “Oh, James, _please_.” He gasped the words out, and slowly, gently extended his fingers to brush along the man’s forehead, pushing only a few stray hairs to the side. “James, how can you be here? You cannot… _please do not_ …” 

He had been staring at James’s closed eyes, but suddenly movement caught his attention at the corner of his vision. A single drop of blood had formed at James’s hairline, and was beginning to trace a path down his forehead. Francis brushed it aside absentmindedly, before he could even think of what he was doing, and more blood welled forth. “Oh, no. No, James. _You cannot be here. It isn’t you. You cannot…!_ ” He grabbed one of the man’s hands. 

The man in the boat’s eyes flew open. _Francis_ , the voice in his head cried. Unmistakably James now. Had it been him all along? “James. _James!_ ” Francis was shouting now, leaning over and laying his free hand along the side of the other man’s face. “Do not do this. You cannot leave me.”

 

__

_My hand, Francis. Take it!_

__

He tightened his grip on the hand he already held. The voice in his head continued. 

 

__

_thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood_

__

_So in my veins red life might stream again,_

“What? James, I don’t...” 

__

_And thou be conscience-calm’d_

__

 

James’s hand tightened around his. 

__

__

_–see here it is–_

__

_I hold it towards you._

_“Help me.”_ James’s lips moved, silently, and Francis watched as the hand he held blackened and fell to dust around his. 

—

He was screaming. At least, he wanted to scream, but there was no breath left in him. Neither did he have any command over his body; he struggled to inhale, but his lungs would not obey. The only sound he could make was a desperate rattling gasp that left him feeling as empty as before.

Several seconds before he gasped again. It barely helped. He would drown in the open air before his lungs could take anything in. The violent beating of his heart wracked his entire body; certainly it would give out in a matter of moments. The strain would surely kill him, even if lack of air did not. 

His vision spun, but he was vaguely aware that the scenery had shifted. It was dark, again, save for several pinpoints of light to either side of him. There was solid ground beneath his feet, steady and not crunching now like Nunavut shale. A loud creaking began somewhere beneath him, ice groaning against wood. _Terror_ , he thought, vision coming slightly into focus. _Abandoned—no. Not yet._ He was sitting upright against the stern wall of the great cabin, he realized, white knuckles gripping the leather edge of the bench below the window. He could not move, but his eyes darted around the space; the glow of the lamps, the strangely-anchored furniture, the peculiar tilt of the floor. _Terror_ , he confirmed, as his chest made yet another rattling sound in a frenzied attempt at breathing. 

There were voices in the hallway outside the cabin. _Oh God, not now_ , he thought, _not like this_. He had a vague notion of telling whoever it was to go away, but speaking, let alone raising his voice to be heard across the room, was quite out of the question. There was a polite knock at the door, followed by James’s amused voice as he opened it, “Good Lord, Francis, I know you’re a man of few words, but still...” 

“I’m pleased to know I can come and go as I like,” he continued, turning to shut the door, “though it would still be nice to hear you say _come in_ —.” His voice broke abruptly as he turned around. “Oh.” 

The mirthful grin James had been wearing dissolved in an instant and the color drained from his face. “God, Francis, what is it? You look like you’ve been communing with spirits.” 

Francis opened his mouth to say—something, he could not fix his thoughts enough to determine what—but he could not muster any sound. He gaped at the man who stood before him, thinner and with straighter hair then he had just dreamed, but still tall, striking, and very much alive. His eyes followed James’s long legs as he crossed the room in several paces, coming to stand only inches apart from him. James was looking down at him with open concern. “Are you unwell?” 

James reached out a hand, as if to place it on his friend’s shoulder, and Francis startled violently at the sight of it. _So he could move now_ , he supposed, whatever good that did him. With a grimace James curled his fingers back and drew his hand away. Still frowning, he stepped past Francis and sat down next to him, turning to the side to look him in the eye. In this awkward position he had to brace himself with his left hand at the back of the bench, almost against the wall behind where Francis was sitting. He tilted his head, slightly, apparently waiting. Finally Francis let out a halting sigh, and leaned back against the wall, and against James’s arm. “James…” he said, quietly. “I’m...sorry. Was...dreaming, I suppose.” 

“I gathered as much,” James replied, in a low voice. He lifted his right hand, slightly, again. “May I—?” 

Francis nodded, staring mainly at the ceiling, and felt James lay his hand on his chest, over his still-frantic heart. “My God, man, what _was_ it?” James was saying, moving his fingers below Francis’s shoulder, along his collarbone. “Unless...you don’t want to tell me.” Francis was silent, trying to focus only on James’s _quite alive_ hand, which was now moving along his arm. At length he reached up and placed his own hand over the other, twisting their fingers together, seeking out the warmth of them to fully convince himself that James was real, and here, in the moment. He turned his head to the side, and though he discovered he was speaking straight into James’s shoulder, managed, “I most _certainly_ do not want to tell you, James.”

James made a noise that was half a plain acknowledgement and half a laugh. “At least you begin to sound like yourself.” He sat up straighter, and removed his arm from where it was pinned against the wall. Flexing his fingers to restore circulation, he reached up and straightened Francis’s hair back into place. 

“I’m beginning to have serious doubts about ever leaving you alone at night anymore, though. What have you been doing to fall asleep out here anyway?” He bent down and picked up a small book from where it had fallen to the floor. He regarded the red and gold cover suspiciously. “Keats?” He went on. “Christ, but that’s dismal stuff.” He tossed the book onto the table. 

“I’ll be taking that. Now—“ he leaned back against the wall, so that the two men’s shoulders were close enough to touch. He lay his left hand with the palm facing upwards on his leg, indicating that Francis should take it, if he wished. “I have found—in similar circumstances—that sometimes it helps, to talk about, well, honestly _anything_ else. You could, of course,” he said, crossing his legs and looking mischievously over his shoulder, “listen to me talk about my attempt to keep a cheetah as a pet, again. But, as it stands, in all my travels I have never myself been in Ireland, and would be pleased for you to tell me about Banbridge, if you would be so inclined.”

**Author's Note:**

> Historical notes: 
> 
> The boat, containing a body surrounded by all sorts of miscellaneous objects, is a reference to the "Boat Place," a Franklin expedition campsite described in Inuit testimony. The fact that the men all wear watches, even on chains around their necks, comes from testimony of bodies found at another site, often called the "Tent Place." If you are interested in the oral history of the Franklin expedition, I highly recommend David Woodman's [Unravelling the Franklin Mystery: Inuit Testimony](https://books.google.com/books?id=BE2zBgAAQBAJ&pg=PR15&dq=unraveling+the+franklin+mystery+inuit+testimony&hl=en&sa=X&ved=0ahUKEwj8tru_3-bfAhWohOAKHYQ1Cx0Q6AEIKDAA#v=onepage&q&f=false). _The Terror_ made great use of it in the final episode! 
> 
> Tripe de roche, or "rock tripe," is any number of types of lichen growing in the Canadian arctic, which can in fact be eaten. Franklin's 1819 Coppermine Expedition earned him the name "The Man Who Ate His Boots," but he and his men also survived by eating tripe de roche.
> 
> I wrote this upon reading the poem "This Living Hand," by John Keats, who died at age 25 from consumption and wrote some really dismal stuff. I later found out that while Keats died in 1821, this poem was not in fact published until the 1890s, when it was discovered in his papers. So, unfortunately, the men on the Franklin expedition would not have actually known about it--unless you want to consider this an AU where it _had_ been published earlier. 
> 
> _This living hand, now warm and capable_  
>  _Of earnest grasping, would, if it were cold_  
>  _And in the icy silence of the tomb,_  
>  _So haunt thy days and chill thy dreaming nights_  
>  _That thou would wish thine own heart dry of blood_  
>  _So in my veins red life might stream again,_  
>  _And thou be conscience-calmed—see here it is—_  
>  _I hold it towards you._


End file.
